Amsterdam -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- On November 2 , 2004 , Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was bicycling to work in Amsterdam when he was shot eight times at close range . He died instantly , but in a fit of rage , his assailant , Dutch-Moroccan Mohammed Bouyeri , also attempted to cut off his head with a machete .

Bouyeri killed van Gogh because of a short film he had recently produced with Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali that criticized Islam 's treatment of women .

The film showed verses of the Quran projected onto the bodies of several naked young women . It was a film designed to provoke . And it did . Ali subsequently went into a self-imposed exile in the United States .

News : Six things to know about the attack

Now , seven years later , a short , amateurish film entitled `` Innocence of Muslims , '' purportedly created by Sam Bacile in the U.S. , portrays the Prophet Mohammed as a philandering child molester . -LRB- `` Sam Bacile '' appears to be a pseudonym . -RRB-

Terry Jones , a Christian pastor based in Florida who has a long history of making incendiary statements about Islam , is promoting `` Innocence of Muslims . '' Jones also recently called for an `` International Judge Mohammed Day '' to be held on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 , this past Tuesday .

News about the film has sparked outrage in the Muslim world . Mobs have attacked American embassies and consulates in Egypt , Libya and Yemen . The U.S. ambassador to Libya , J. Christopher Stevens , and three of his staff members were killed in what appears to have been a well-organized attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday . The attackers may have used the opportunity presented by the film protests to mount the assault .

These attacks came after the accidental burning of Qurans by U.S. soldiers at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in February sparked massive protests across the country , resulting in the deaths of at least 30 Afghans and six U.S. soldiers , all of whom were shot by men in Afghan security force uniforms .

Opinion : Survivor of 1979 consulate attack -- Libya an eerie echo

And these are just the latest in a series of violent reactions to the perceived disrespect of the prophet and the Quran by Westerners -- sometimes intentional and sometimes unintentional -- that , in an increasingly globalized world of almost instantaneous communication , has intensified significantly during the past several years . And Muslim extremists as well as Christian fundamentalists in the West have increasingly intentionally amplified this trend .

Politicians and the media in the Muslim world have also played an important , though perhaps unintended , role in stirring up violence in the wake of a number of these perceived attacks on Islam .

A YouTube video of `` Innocence of Muslims '' that provoked the Libyan mob to attack the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was initially published in July , but it was not until versions of it dubbed in Arabic appeared online and were broadcast by religious Egyptian news channel al-Nas that protests sprouted in Egypt .

A May 2005 Newsweek article claiming that American soldiers at Guantanamo had flushed a copy of the Quran down the toilet went unnoticed for nearly a week before Pakistani politician Imran Khan pointed the article out in a news conference . More than a dozen people were subsequently killed during protests in Afghanistan . -LRB- Newsweek later retracted the story . -RRB-

Similarly , when Jones burned a copy of the Quran at his church on March 20 , 2011 , two weeks went by without any incident . But then President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan made a speech calling for his arrest . Within 24 hours , protesters stormed the United Nations compound in Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan , killing seven foreign employees , and demonstrations across the country killed more than a dozen other people .

In 2005 , the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed , setting off a wave of protests and attacks over the next several years in which as many as 200 people have been killed .

In 2008 , for instance , al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Danish Embassy in Islamabad , which killed a half-dozen bystanders , saying the powerful suicide car bomb was in retaliation for the offensive cartoons . Two years later , Kurt Westergaard , one of the cartoonists , barely escaped from a Somali man linked to Al-Shabaab , al Qaeda 's Somali affiliate , who broke into the cartoonist 's home in Denmark with a knife and ax .

But the violence sparked by the Jyllands-Posten cartoons , one of which depicted the Prophet Mohammed with a turban-wrapped bomb on his head , began a full four months after the images were published by the newspaper and were the result of a carefully orchestrated campaign by two Danish Muslim clerics who toured the Middle East , presenting a dossier about the cartoons to important religious and political figures .

Opinion : Libya killings show U.S. at risk in Arab world

Included in the dossier were cartoons that had never appeared in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper , showing offensive images of the Prophet Mohammed .

As a result , entering the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Copenhagen today is akin to visiting a prison , with a heavily barred set of metal gates securing entrance to the building . And just as author Salman Rushdie remains under threat decades after the 1989 fatwa against him for his novel `` The Satanic Verses , '' so too the threat against Jyllands-Posten is likely to endure for many years .

On Wednesday , Karzai released a public statement strongly condemning the recent `` criminal act . '' This was not a reference to the assault on the U.S. consulate in Libya a day earlier that resulted in the four deaths there but to the release of `` Innocence of Muslims , '' the video that denigrates the Prophet Mohammed .

News : Unanswered questions after the attack

Karzai did express his condolences about the deaths at the Libyan consulate when he spoke privately to President Obama . However , his public statement will surely draw attention to an issue that is likely to cause additional violent protests in Afghanistan , which NATO forces are steeling themselves for .

With allies like these , who needs enemies ?

@highlight

Peter Bergen : Violence against U.S. over film is part of a pattern of incidents

@highlight

He says Christian and Muslim extremists have incited deadly protests for years

@highlight

Bergen : In several cases , the words of political leaders have helped spark violence